"The historic Christ as the New Testament portrays Him will remain, the starting-point in history of the new life-offer, all the more real....because on the present He IS what the history declares Him to have been. And the supernatural Christ, given not merely as a truth to the mind, but as a dynamic reality to the inner experience—the experience of Him being actually....an experience of His constant creative power--remains the same yesterday and to-day and for evermore." - Henry William Clark

The Universal Christ

"The resurrection gives us a Christ who is spiritually present; the Holy Spirit gives us a Christ who is universally present. By the coming of the Holy Spirit the risen Christ is made omnipresent, and the whole process of revelation here and now completed. Nothing higher can be looked for until the veil is dropped on the other side. Momentous consequences follow the acceptance of this truth. If the age of the Spirit under which we are now living marks the final outgoing of God to man; if the God who is manifested in Christ is every-where present in the Spirit; if through the medium-ship of the Spirit he dwells in the inner sanctuary of the soul; if he is not only with man, but in man; if through the Holy Spirit his presence within the soul is realized as the presence of Christ, then the time foretold by Jesus has come when temples and shrines are no longer indispensable, when every man has immediate access to God as the Father, and when every humble receptive soul may become "an habitation of God in the Spirit." "

- James Mann Campbell (The Presence, p. 89)

The New Covenant Gift of the Spirit

"Let us recall the three considerations that have been mentioned. First, that our Lord Himself in His Divine-human nature was on earth, and is now in heaven, possessed of the fulness of the Spirit, and this in such a manner that the Spirit entered into all He was in the one sphere, and enters into all He is in the other. Secondly, that the Spirit given us by our Lord in His glorified condition is His own Spirit in the most definite and particular meaning of the words. Thirdly, that when the Spirit is bestowed upon us He must be made inwardly and experimentally ours, entering into all that we are in a manner similar to that in which He entered into all that Jesus was and is. Let us fix these three points distinctly in our minds, and it will follow that the Spirit promised as the chief gift of the New Covenant is pervaded by human as well as Divine elements. As the Spirit of the exalted and glorified Lord, He is not the Third Person of the Trinity in His absolute and metaphysical existence, but that Person as He is mediated through the Son, who is human as well as Divine. It is on this particular aspect of His being that He diffuses Himself through the members of Christ's body, and abides in them. Only as human, entering into and coalescing with what is human, can He be also our Spirit dwelling in a living and real way within us."

- William Milligan (The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of Our Lord, p. 189)

Friday, July 28, 2017

The satisfaction of humanity in Jesus Christ, part 5 of 9

"These are the two great matters of spiritual concern about which the heart of man demands satisfaction, — the sure knowledge of God, the conscious relief from sin. Jesus Christ has given at these points a satisfaction which is true and full.
But here comes in a new fact, which is of the greater significance because it is not precisely like those upon which we have been dwelling. As long as the human heart was unsatisfied, uncertain about God, unrelieved of the sense of sin, what could it do but expend all its energies in trying to gain some kind of satisfaction? What could the man do, who would know God, but "feel after him, if haply he might find him"? What could the man do, oppressed with the sin of sin, but strive by penance and sacrifice to purge the guilt of his soul? As long as these great necessitous desires were unsatisfied, all other spiritual desires were held back and repressed, until at times it seemed as if they had no existence, as if the individual man cared only for a personal and selfish salvation. But when Christ satisfied these imperious desires, then all other spiritual desires were set free and sprang forth into newness of life. Nothing is more inspiring than to note the growth of those new desires which Christ called forth, and of which he took the leadership. Christianity meant at once, in idea, not simply the knowledge of God and the relief from the sense of sin, but a new society, new laws and customs, a new literature and life, another and a better world. The meaning of the new liberty was exemplified in Paul. Here was a man of essential greatness of nature, but dwarfed in his powers, and in danger of perishing in his narrowness. Christ met him and set him free, and instantly the freed and enlarged powers of his nature went out to the saving of the world. It was the manifest intent of Christ that it should always be thus with his followers. He never intended that freedom should be an end in itself. He never intended that any soul should rest in the satisfaction which he had brought to it. The Christian was to be a new man, conscious of new and larger desires, and set to new and larger tasks.
Jesus Christ thus declares himself in respect to man by the twofold sign of power, — able to satisfy his deepest longings, and able also to lead forth into wide activity those latent desires of his spiritual nature which he has set at liberty. And it is evident that humanity responds to the spiritual leadership of Christ, as it acknowledges the satisfaction which it has found in him. One by one the great leaders of humanity have been taken up in the progress of the race, and absorbed in the volume of its better life. Jesus Christ has not been taken up and absorbed. His leadership is the constant and undiminished factor in human progress. The race gains upon itself, but it makes no gain upon him. It has been sententiously said that "Christianity is always the best thing in the world." That may mean much or little. Christ does not share the varying fortune of Christianity. He is, as we know, "the same yesterday and to-day," and as we believe, "yea and forever."

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Colossians 2: 16-17

16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

Christianity is Christ!

“Christianity is not religion; it is the reality of Jesus Christ as God coming in the form of His Spirit to indwell man in order to restore him to the functional intent of God whereby the character of God is allowed to be manifested in man’s behavior to the glory of God. Christianity is not religion! Christianity is Christ! Christianity is “Christ-in-you-ity.” Jesus Christ did not found a religion to remember and reiterate His teaching. Christianity is the personal, spiritual presence of the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ, manifesting His life and character in Christians, i.e. “Christ-ones.” "

- James A. Fowler (Christianity is NOT Religion, p. 34)

Humanity's Life and Lord

"This continued Activity is exercised, on the one hand, by His Spirit, and on the other hand by His authority as Lord. As Spirit, or in the power of His Spirit, which is the Spirit of God, He has incorporated Himself, as it were, into the very life of the race, in order to distribute in the members of it His own perfected life; while as Lord, He is related to them as their Supreme Authority, representing God to us and receiving from us the obedience we owe to God. Christ as the INDWELLING SPIRIT and LIFE of His people, and Christ their Lord,—this is the distinctive glory of the Exalted One. The change from death to resurrection, we are taught to believe, brought to Him an accession of personal endowment that qualified Him to exert His influence as a principle of new life in men, and it meant also His investiture with supreme power as the Lord of human life and destiny. Accordingly, in the record of Paul's experience in the Epistles, He is recognised both as an energy of Divine life in believers, working towards their renewal and moral transformation, and also as Lord and Sovereign ruling them by the authority of His truth and goodness. In other words, Christ is at once Immanent as the Spirit of God in men, and TRANSCENDENT over them as their Divinely constituted Lord. Both aspects of His Person enter into the apprehension of His unique greatness as the Second Adam. Fully to understand His work in this capacity, we must view Him not only as the embodied type of all that a spiritual man should be, not only as having acted on God's behalf and man's, and by His work in relation to sin restored us to fellowship with God,—we must view Him also as living to reproduce and perpetuate in us by His Spirit His own perfection, and as exercising over us the authority of God Himself. It is, as we shall see in this connection, because He works in us with an energy of love and holiness that is identified with the Spirit of God, and commands our obedience with an absoluteness that is identical with the authority of God, that we are to recognise Christ as truly Divine, and to acknowledge the presence in Him of powers of Godhead that constitute Him the object of our faith and worship." - David Somerville (St. Paul's Conception of Christ: or, The Doctrine of the Second Adam, pgs. 111-113)

How great a truth this is!

"But we must not separate the Spirit from Christ as if the two were independent of each other like Peter and Paul. The persons are one in essence. As the Father dwells in and reveals himself through the Son, so the Son dwells in and reveals himself through the Spirit. As Christ could say: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," so the Holy Spirit might say: He that hath seen me hath seen Christ. In the Holy Spirit we have Christ himself, no longer far away and unintelligible, but possessed of a human soul and touched with the feeling of our infirmities as he could never be if he had not passed through the temptation and the sorrow of an actual human life. The Holy Spirit is the same incarnate Christ now made omnipresent and omnipotent. You can appreciate how great a truth this is, when you remember the sorrow of the disciples at the taking from them of their Lord. To part with him, their teacher and helper, seemed to them to be the loss of all. How hard it was for them to realize that it was expedient for them that he should go away! Yet it was best for them to lose his visible, bodily presence, because only thus could they have his invisible, spiritual omnipresence. Unless he went away in body, he could not send his Spirit. But if he departed from their eyes, he could come into their hearts. Hence he can say indifferently, "I will send the Comforter," and "I will come unto you"; for the Comforter is only Christ in another, more spiritual, more universal form."

The Spirit of the glorified Jesus

"We have seen that God has given a twofold revelation of Himself, first as God in the Old Testament, then as Father in the New. We know how the Son, who had from eternity been with the Father, entered upon a new stage of existence when He became flesh. When He returned to Heaven, He was still the same only-begotten Son of God, and yet not altogether the same. For He was now also, as Son of Man, the first-begotten from the dead, clothed with that glorified humanity which He had perfected and sanctified for Himself. And just so the Spirit of God as poured out on Pentecost was indeed something new. Through the Old Testament He was always called the Spirit of God or the Spirit of the Lord; the name of Holy Spirit He did not yet bear as His own proper name. It is only in connection with the work He has to do in preparing the way for Christ, and a body for Him, that the proper name comes into use (Luke i. 15, 35). When poured out at Pentecost, He came as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of that life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus. It is in this capacity specially that He bears the name of Holy Spirit, for it is as the Indwelling One that God is Holy. And of this Spirit, as He dwelt in Jesus in the flesh, and can dwell in us in the flesh too, it is distinctly and literally true; the Holy Spirit was not yet. The Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Son of man become the Son of God—He could not be until Jesus was glorified."

- Andrew Murray (The Spirit of Christ, pgs. 52-53)

The present Reality

"'This spake Jesus of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet; because Jesus was not yet glorified.' God be praised! Jesus has been glorified: there is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus; we have received Him. In the Old Testament only the unity of God was revealed; when the Spirit was mentioned, it was always as His Spirit, the power by which God was working: He was not known on earth as a Person. In the New Testament the Trinity is revealed; with Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended as a Person to dwell in us. This is the fruit of Jesus' work, that we now have the Personal Presence of the Holy Spirit on earth. Just as in Christ Jesus, the second Person, the Son came to reveal the Father, and the Father dwelt and spoke in Him, even so the Spirit, the third Person, comes to reveal the Son, and in Him the Son dwells and works in us. This is the glory wherewith the Father glorified the Son of man, because the Son had glorified Him, that in His Name and through Him, the Holy Spirit descends as a Person to dwell in believers, and to make the glorified Jesus a Present Reality within them. This is it of which Jesus says, that whoso believeth in Him shall never thirst, but shall have rivers of waters flowing out of him. This alone it is that satisfies the soul's thirst, and makes it a fountain to quicken others; the Personal Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, revealing the Presence of the glorified Jesus. He that believeth on me, rivers of water shall flow out of him. This He said of the Spirit. Here we have once again the blessed Key of all God's treasures: He that believeth on me. It is the glorified Jesus who baptizes with the Holy Ghost: let us believe in Him. Let each one who longs for the full blessing here promised only believe. Let us believe in Him, that He is indeed glorified, that all He is and does and wishes to do is in the power of a Divine glory. According to the riches of His glory, God can now work in us. Let us believe that he has given His Holy Spirit, that we have the personal presence of the Spirit on earth and within us. By this faith the glory of Jesus in heaven and the Power of the Spirit in our hearts become inseparably linked. Let us believe that in the fellowship with Jesus the stream will flow ever stronger and fuller, into us and out of us. Yes ; let us believe on Jesus. But let us remember: thinking on these things, understanding them, being very sure of them, rejoicing in a fuller insight into them, all this, though needful, is not itself believing. Believing is that power of the renewed nature which, forsaking self and dying to it, makes room for the Divine, for God, for the glorified Christ to come and take possession and do His work. Faith in Jesus bows in lowly stillness and poverty of spirit, to realize that self has nothing, and that Another, the unseen Spirit, has now come in to be its leader, its strength, and its life. Faith in Jesus bows in the stillness of a quiet surrender before Him, fully assured that as it waits on Him, He will cause the river to flow."

- Andrew Murray (The Spirit of Christ, pgs. 56-58)

The true conception of God

"The incarnation thus shows the kind of God who is universally present. The heavenly Father is like Jesus. The spirit of Jesus is the spirit of divine Fatherhood made universal. The true conception of God is that of an infinite Christ."

- James Mann Campbell (The Presence, p. 61)

He comes to us through the Son

"Hence we are taught that the Holy Spirit, when He comes to the soul, does not speak of Himself—of His own personality — but He takes of the things that belong to Christ, and shows them to the believer. When the soul is conscious of the Divine presence, it docs not recognize two personalities; because the Spirit comes clothed in the personality of Jesus, and its life is bestowed through the manifestations which God makes of Himself in His Son.

The Holy Spirit gives to the soul by influx through the susceptibility, a newer and higher consciousness of the Divine Nature, which is love. But He is not a revealer of new truths, nor an exhibitor of His own personality. When He visits the pious mind, He does not lead that mind to think of Himself, but of Jesus. He takes of the manifestations of the Divine character, made by Christ, and gives them efficacy, by power and love, in the human soul. He comes to us through the Son, baptized in His humanities, as a ray of light takes the hue of the medium through which it passes; and thus He becomes to the soul the spirit of both the divine and the human, as it was in Christ Jesus. The Son of God manifests the Divine Mind; the Spirit of God uses that manifestation to sanctify and save us. Hence Christ and the Spirit are one to the soul, and one in the Church to the end of the dispensation; as He said, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." "

A favorite quote

"Before the Incarnation of our Lord the Spirit to be given had not assumed that special form which He was to possess in New Testament times. Had the gift been merely outward, such as a Divine Person may bestow in the plenitude of His grace; or had it been only the gift of the Third Person of the Trinity, viewed in His Eternal existence and Divine attributes, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to understand why the Spirit should not have been granted in the same sense, though perhaps not in the same degree, to the saints of the Old Testament as to those of the New Testament age. But we have already seen that, as the Spirit interpenetrates our Lord in His human as well as His Divine nature, so our Lord in His human as well as His Divine nature interpenetrates the Spirit. The Spirit bestowed upon us as the fulfilment of the promise of the New Covenant is the Spirit of Christ as He is now. With, by, and in this Spirit we receive Christ Himself, together with all that He is as the Redeemer of men. By faith we become really and inwardly one with Him, and the energies of His life pass over into our life." - William Milligan